In the beginning, it was just the sort of strange and vaguely upsetting social trend one first encounters on the local news or an episode of Law and Order: SVU. A loose, mostly online subculture of disaffected men, willingly shrinking themselves to miniscule size as a protest against "wokeness," or to escape the rat race, the matrix, the violently tedious humdrum of everyday life—how could the barely-just-in-touch writers of daytime television resist such an alarming and odd morsel of reality? It wasn't long until the general population, the "normies," developed a surface-level understanding of the so-called SMOL Community.
SMOL stands for Strong Men Operating Lonesomely. If you suspect that the acronym is too contrived to be organic, you're in the majority. As of yet, however,, no one has been able to trace the term back to its origins to see whether it arose first as the proverbial Ichthys for a then-obscure brotherhood of the similarly-sized, or as an insult, sprung from the minds of the toxic, PC giants who hold the SMOLs in common derision. At any rate, the name has stuck.
The ideology of the SMOL Community is incoherent and highly idiosyncratic, political but bereft of any positive vision for society, economic but devoid of any material grasp of the subject, philosophical but lacking any rigorously-defended insights; it is a worldview and a culture bound together more by a gravel-like mixture of bland signifiers and rhetorical gestures than any real ideas—the rat race, the Matrix, the feminists, the PC mob, the woke sheeple, the hustle, grindset. What the group believes in varies so widely from person to person that it may be more useful to think of the group as united by a set of common problems (e.g.. cats, rain, spiders, shoes, children, women), rather than a shared understanding of the universe. Say what you will, it is the kind of intellectually-underdeveloped movement certain species of disgruntled young and, not uncommonly, middle-aged man will find utterly irrefutable. They will find in it, inexplicably, a method of untold explanatory power, which promises to make sense of the chaos of their lives with as little creative input from them as possible.
Normies, as they are called, take an interest in the Community for varying reasons. For some, it is a rubbernecker's fascination with internet weirdness. Others find it useful to expose themselves to an alien perspective of the world— and there is hardly more alien a perspective than that of a man who sleeps on a bed of cotton balls. There is, of course, a cohort of people whose intentions are less than noble; they are, arguably, no better than the miniscule men they mock, tease, trap, or torture. But if it truly is a world of winners and losers, as so many in the SMOL Community profess, then it is hard to argue with facts: they are very small fish in a very big pond.
***
He waited by the front steps, too small to mount the stairs. Passerby gawked at him; every now and then he was forced to evade the all-too-eager hands of children, or the curious snouts of giant dogs. A young redheaded woman nearly crushed him by accident as she climbed the steps in the space of a few seconds, held her key fob to the small pad by the door, and walked in. To her, the activity was entirely mundane, effortless. Meanwhile, he screamed and shook and leapt, trying to appear as big as possible, so that she might, with her immense strength, keep the door open just long enough for him to slip in. And they (the normies, the NPCs, the giants, etc.) always gave people like him just enough time, and left the door open just a crack, so that the miniscule men crawling about their feet could only feel like rats, scurrying in at the last second because their presence is unwanted. He continued waiting.
Minutes, hours, days, weeks later, she arrived: Vera Valentine, coffee in hand, dressed lightly for the summer heat. She took one step towards the door, realized her mistake, and panicked slightly; she turned her heels upward so that she could ensure she hadn't stepped on him, and in the process saw him hopping up and down, ranting to get her attention. He was clearly upset, she noticed, and she put a hand to her mouth so that he might not see her stifle a giggle; he did, at any rate, though he was used to mockery. These idiots just don't understand, he thought to himself, they look just as stupid to me as I do to them.
Without asking for his input, she plucked him from the ground. He hung in the air, suspended between two immense, well-manicured digits. He crossed his arms, he tried his best to ignore her pleasantries, her greetings, her pointed observations. "Oh, I've never held one you guys like this! I could get used to it!" Whatever, he thought to himself, you couldn't imagine how dope my life is.
"Sorry, that was rude, I'm just so excited for this episode!" she said, stepping into her apartment. She gently placed him on the table next to a Blue Yeti microphone.
"You want anything before we get started? I got coffee, tea, soda… oh, and these cute little cups, too!" She held up what was clearly a plastic toy cup, "I'm sure they make real ones but I don't know the scoop on where to get 'em, sorry. But that's exactly the sort of thing you can tell me during the interview!" He said nothing. He was taking in his environment; in his mind, he liked to believe that he was scanning the room for escape routes, possible threats, improvised weapons. In reality, he was merely flummoxed, as he still was from time to time, even months after the shrinking process, by the size of everyday objects. The microphone was the size of tank, the laptop on the table stretched into the air like the screen at a drive-in theatre, the cup of milky coffee she'd placed down so close to him irradiated a powerful heat. When she sat down, the table shook, and he was almost knocked to his knees.
"Oops, sorry little guy. Guess I don't know my own strength. Say, you're not very talkative for a SMOL, I would have supposed you guys could talk the ears off a fruit bat. No offense, I've just heard you guys are pretty opinionated. Hmm, what if I do this…"
She fiddled with the microphone.
"There, now you shouldn't have to raise your voice!"
He tapped on the microphone with his fist to test it. She laughed.
"Sorry, that just looked cute."
All at once, the stage was set; the microphone began to buzz, the air itself seemed to condense and go still, the giant sat across from him, mouth curled in an expectant smile.
"Do you mind if I masturbate real quick?" he said, in a steady, matter-of-fact manner. "Like you can turn away or leave the room or something. It'll really help me concentrate."
"what"
"You're very attractive—physically, anyway—and you're showing a lot of skin, and I was very close to you because you had me between your fingers, but obviously we can't fuck because, well because frankly I'm so over sex and, honestly, women, as I'm sure we'll get to in our discussion—but duty calls."
"I'm… flattered? she said, unflattered."
"Thanks, many women would be highly honored to get a compliment from me. I have impeccable standards, but you're fit, and you have very clean skin. Really you should feel good about yourself, other than your hands, which are a little too wrinkly for your age. How old you?"
"I'm… twenty-eight."
"Okay, cool, Don Harkins, nice to meet you. Anyway, I need to bust."
"Um, I have an idea," she said, grabbing a red Solo cup from the top of the fridge. She put it on its side and placed it before him, and it looked like a cave. "What about this? Think you weigh enough to keep it from rolling? Do you need anything for… clean-up? Like a bit of tissue or something?"
"Oh yes, definitely. I'm very fertile. Anyway, feel free to do whatever, this'll take a while, as I'm very virile."
"O…"
The sound of his labors travelled through the mic and out her laptop speaker; she reached over to turn it off. She reconsidered the entire affair and her life leading up to this point.
"…K."
She sat down and sipped her coffee and waited.
***
Passion Project, hosted by Vera Valentine, was a podcast about romance and dating in the modern world. Accordingly, the conversations very often veered into unseemly territory; sometimes, in fact, that was the entire point: for the listener to acquire, in the space of fifty-five minutes plus breaks for sponsors, a novel perspective on a universal theme—what our filthy species gets up to when no one but God is watching. And in her time as the show's intrepid curator of sexual acts both wholesome and unholy, she'd arrived at a state of semi-permanent blissful indifference. The raunchiest tales of sexual conquest or failure, the most bizarre turn-ons imaginable, the complexes-bordering-on-pathologies certain bedroom environments tend to cultivate, she considered them all with the same insouciant grin, the same confident laughter, the same subtle showmanship. Maya, the god of desire, once summoned forth orgies to encircle the Bodhi tree and tempt the Buddha, but he held strong. She would too. Or so she thought.
In fairness, it was not the perversion of her subject, one Mr. Don Harkins, that disturbed her inner peace. Far from it, in fact. Any discussion of his strange predilections was a welcome relief from the real cause of her distress: Don Harkins the Man©, Don Harkins the "thinker", Don Harkins the haver-of-opinions; Don Harkins the pervert would be a saint by comparison, if only he could extricate himself from his fellow personae.
She'd introduced the show, herself, the topic of today's discussion, and her guest; she thanked him for his time. "You're welcome, he said, though let's try and keep things short, huh? I've got a lot of irons in the fire. All I'm here to do is correct the record on all the lies the media tells about us in the SMOL Community." "Okay," she said, "for sure," then she asked him to give tell the audience a little bit about himself to which he replied:
"well lets see I was born approximately 38 years in a small hospital in san Bernadino California but of course I left for obvious reasons because you know what happened to California I had two parents yes that's right two parents so before you say oh I wonder how you end up like this must come from a broken home I actually had two parent a mother and a father just how god intended I'm not trying to offend I'm just saying what I believe though the kids these days think those are the same thing anyway I had a strong father figure in my life he used to play catch with me by asking daryl our neighbor to play catch with me while he drank on the porch which I know that sounds weird but he was tired you see he worked at the factory very hard and my mother barely helped around the house barely helps me now even though I don't really need it but still she doesn't even offer which I think is an abrogation of her motherly duties but whatever anyway when I was twenty-five years old I made the biggest mistake of my life people say that shrinking must have been the biggest mistake of my life but actually the biggest mistake of my life I made when I was twenty-five years old and I got married to my college sweetheart I studied biochemistry by the way a real virtuous subject none of that made-up gender science or whatever they let you kids major in anyway sometime along the way I got really into what I think might have been my life's calling competitive Texas hold'em now that's a real game not like any of these…"
And after such a rapturous start, she quickly changed the subject.
"So, what's the deal with SMOL?"
"Right, right, well, in a nutshell, we're fed up. Fed up with the phony empowerment of women, at the cost of leaving our young men behind, fed up with the pandering baby-brained woke shut-in pop-culture freaks at the cost of real culture, fed-up with the rat race, with the system."
"I thought you guys were all about the hustle or grindset or something."
"Neither the hustle nor the grindset are equivalent to the rat race, rookie mistake."
"Okay, sure. Um, well, I gotta ask… what does any of that have to do with shrinking yourself down to an inch tall?"
"Two inches, actually. And it's simple. The government's scared itself into thinking the climate hoax is a problem."
Oh Lord.
"So it offers a respectable stipend to anyone willing to "reduce their carbon footprint" by reducing their size."
"Ooooh, interesting. How respectable are we talking? A million? Ten million?"
"Better: one hundred-thousand! He reverently emphasized each syllable of the phrase."
"Uh, how is that better?"
"I never said it was better, you can't get upset just because the crazy numbers you said don't match reality."
"But you did…" She smiled, catching herself. She did a brief mental reset and found again her chipper, broadcast voice. "Sounds like a good amount! Not a lowball at all! And what have you been done with the money."
"Well, let me just tell you, I don't think splurging on big purchases is ideal behavior, but I decided what the hell, it's my dream. I bought a Rolls Royce.
"Awesome! Like the down payment on a loan or something?"
"What? Fuck no! The whole car!"
"Oh, that's cool. Cool! I’m happy for you!"
"And it's the real thing, with a real motor and everything. Don't go thinking I'm driving some suped-up overpriced Hot Wheel!"
"I didn't say that… (breathe, V.V., relax, look at Adobe Audition, oh good we have the WHOLE HOUR LEFT! it's okay, baby girl, breathe) Hey, sounds like you're living the dream!"
"And what kind of thing does a person of your stature (ooh, poor choice of words) do with a car like that?"
"Poor choice of words, but I'll let it slide, he said, I'm in a monogamous mood, anway, I…"
"Do you mean magnanimous?"
"That's what I said, mahoganous—anyway, if you're done interrupting me, my sister just got done installing this sick racetrack…"
Oh, yes, the sister. Don started talking about his living situation. When Don received his tax-free nest egg (or "signing bonus," as he called it) from the Department of Energy (who oversaw the entire program), he realized that an all-to-sizeable portion of it would vanish in an instant were he to upgrade his living quarters. Before he'd signed on, he'd imagined his future lodgings: a mansion by a lake, a private golf course (he'd learn), a servant's quarters (there would be servants), a stable for the horses, (there would be horses; and he'd learn). How he'd make use of any of this at his new size did not occur to him at all; nor did the realities of the housing market. A hundred thousand dollars wouldn't even cover a decade's mortgage in your average anonymous suburb—alas, even the cheapest, most tasteless McMansion the world had to offer was beyond his insect-like reach.
So, he invested into his old apartment. He was small after all (or "diminutive," as he would insist to others); even the living room was land enough for a king, and a king he was. And a king needs servants. He bought the finest accommodations on the market to make his whole apartment accessible. Two women, the technician and her assistant, arrived to install the devices. Of course, he insisted on shadowing them, walking along the floor like an insect, wearing nothing but a tissue as a toga (he hadn't put much thought into clothes, either). He paid the assistant extra to carry him around, and he rode her open hand like a palanquin. From atop his throne he questioned their competence, their training, offered his own assistance, claiming to have quite the aptitude for machines. Eventually, they dropped him in a mason jar and left him on the living room table with the TV on. After they'd finished in peace, the technician plucked him out of the jar and held him dangling before her eyes. She flashed a broad grin and said, "All done Mister Harkins! Call us if you need help with anything!" An odd sensation came over him as he dangled before her helplessly; he looked directly down and noticed for the first time her gargantuan breasts; he imagined himself smothered between them, completely immobilized, defeated utterly by the mere presence of a woman's body, which he thought very little of (or so he'd say). Suddenly, as he was processing this newfound fascination, she drew him closer and said, "By the way, if you ever question my ability again, (even closer now), I'll crush your head between my fingers, understand?" Pressure mounted on the sides of his head as she tightened her grip, illustrating her threat as she made it. She placed him on the table, by one of the various elevators they'd installed, "Thank you and have a nice day!"
He tried living with just the machines for a few days but it didn't work. The Microkitchen XS, for instance, had to be restocked using a very specific food service. And the options all tasted awful! Black beans? Kale? Broccoli? Meat had become expensive in recent years, sure, but he wasn't even given the option. No, this wouldn't do at all. Luckily, he had a woman in his life to help him with things, a reliable woman.
His mom lived nearby. She was fairly young, only in her mid-fifties, still spry and open to new ideas, apparently willing to accept her son's lifestyle. And of course he only needed her for a handful of tasks, like cooking, cleaning, bathing, laundry, shopping, etc. After all, she always did say he was her baby boy!
She lasted a month. She tried her best, but there's only so many times you can wash your adult son with a hand towel, or nearly crush him underfoot, or walk in on him making waste in the bathroom sink before you begin questioning your decisions as a parent. One day, he'd fallen into a dirty, chili-covered pot as it lay in the sink (he insisted on meat, every night, despite its exorbitant price). From the window by the sink, he told Vera when she asked how it happened, a neighbor of his, a young woman, was relaxing on her balcony. And I was thinking of what she could do to me if she saw me spying on her, like what if she balled me up in her fist and through me against the wall, and I couldn't do anything about. So, anyway, that's how I ended up in the chili.
What Don doesn't know is that his mother, seeing him helpless, covered in the remnants of overpriced fake wagyu and tomato sauce, thought of how easy it would be to drop him into the garbage disposal and put him out of his misery. Instead, she filled the pot with soapy water, half of her hoping he'd wash himself, swim to the edge of the pot, and crawl back onto the granite countertop. The other half of her hoped he'd drown.
"Obviously, she wasn't cut out for it. Mom's always been the liberated type, you know, never really understood the importance of domestic bliss, which is why Dad left, of course. Anyway, my mom told me right to my face that my lifestyle made her uncomfortable. Can you believe that?"
"No, that's completely and utterly shocking. I'm completely and utterly shocked."
"I know! That's fucked, right? Especially given that she's fine with my sister's lifestyle, and she'§ well, you know.”
"No, actually, I don't know. What about your sister?"
"Well, she's a [REDACTED], for one thing."
"Okay, moving on! So, your mom abandoned you, tragic. Do you live alone now?
"Oh, yes, and it's fine by me. You ever heard of Henry David Thoreau?
"Of course! 19th-century American poet and writer. He was a transcendentalist, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was kind of a mentor to him, he authored texts on civil disobedience, humanism, and a book called Wal–"
"Walden! he said, cutting her off, I could see the name of it was giving your trouble, I mean it's a pretty obscure text, I could see how you could forget it. Well, if you read Walden, it's all about the importance of self-reliance, you know, very frontiersman-y book, which is what this country was built on, even if some people have forgotten it, people who love their handouts and gimmes. Self-reliance is very important to me, and in my current state, my apartment is wilderness enough."
"Wow, that sounds so cool! I should have you on my literature podcast to talk about Walden!"
"Sure, just need a new copy. Because I. Because I lost mine."
"Oh, you can take mine! She went over to her bookshelf, grabbed her copy of the Walden and slammed it down in front of him. He dropped to his knees from the impact. Oops, sorry. You shouldn't have any problem taking it home right? Because of how self-reliant you are?"
"Of course, I have my methods."
"Of course. Well, anyway, continue."
"Oh, uh… I was kind of done talking about the book.
"Okay, awesome. Follow-up question: did you know, during the entire time Thoreau was writing that book, his mom was doing his laundry? Doesn't sound very self-reliant to me."
"Who cares? That kind of thing doesn't count!"
"What? Why not?"
"Well, I'll use my sister as an example. After my mom left, I asked my sister to help–"
"I thought you lived alone?"
"I do! She just came in from time to time to clean up, cook, do laundry, install some extra stuff, like that race-track I mentioned earlier, since I didn't want to call those technicians again because of the shoddy job they did, and then she was out the door again, off to do all the [REDACTED] stuff that she does."
"Okay! Language! Once again! And also, I don't really see how that proves your point! It kind of just proves that you! are not! self-reliant!"
"You seem upset? Have I done something that's upset you?"
"No!
"Okay, good. What you need to understand is, yes, my sister helps me with the occasional menial, domestic task, but that's so I can concentrate on the real important shit".
"Important shit like what?"
"Survival. You normies just don't get it. Everything is just so easy for you; it makes you soft. Down here, every day is a struggle to survive. There's threats around every corner, beasts and demons you normies don't notice because they live under your feet. That's the problem with people these days, especially the men, they don't know how to survive on their own. They don't know how to fight."
"And what do you typically find yourself fighting? she asked, increasingly aware that his answers would exhaust her more and more."
"Just yesterday, this spider, this hulking beast, crept up on me while I was on my morning run across the kitchen floor. And all I do, you see, I get a hold of it, and once I get a hold of you with these arms, he flexes, It's all over. And, I mean, what would you have done in my shoes?"
"Uh, I would have just crushed it with my boots." She put her leg on the table, showing off a long, platform boot. There was a small ridge between the heel and the toe and he briefly imagined himself trapped inside it.
"No, I mean if you were me. Like, if you were shrunk."
"Oh, well I just would've picked a different size. Like a full foot or something, instead of being one inch small like you. Feel like most bugs wouldn't be a problem at that point."
"I'm actually two-inches big, thank you. And also you don't get to pick your size. And I'll take that as an admission that you couldn't last a day in my world."
"Sure, whatever. I'm officially cancelling my visit to the Reduction Center. Hey, wait a minute, I thought twelve-inches was like the average, why are you so small?"
"So, first, diminutive. It's a little ironic that when it's about people like me, people like you drop the preferred terminology. Second, like I said, you don't really get to pick. They have like a weekly size budget or something like that, and given how well I did on their physical examinations, they must have assumed I'd be fine regardless, so I got this size and some beta got to keep a few vital inches that he probably needed."
In fact, Don's story was almost entirely wrong. To begin with, most people do pick their size, or rather, the range. While the specific final size of a subject undergoing shrinking is largely indeterministic, the final range can be predicted with a high degree of certainty. There are three ranges in common use. First is the civilian or standard range of ~55 to ~74 inches used mostly for aesthetic reasons with an average final height of 63 inches. Then there is the specialized range of ~24 to ~45 inches, used for deep sea and space exploration with a final average height of 35 inches, just under three-feet. To qualify for the government grant, applicants must choose the lowest of the three common ranges, ~6 to ~20 inches with an average of 10. At the Reduction Center, Don noted this on his application, but his behavior created complications.
Namely, he insisted on antagonizing the mostly-female staff at the Center. He specifically targeted the operator of the reduction chamber, a young, newly-credentialed professional named Thelma Horne. He hit on her relentlessly, insisted on pronouncing the obviously silent-E in her last name, offered her unsolicited advice on how to operate the machine; there was only so much chiding she could take. Upon his entry into the machine, she set it to an experimental range, not approved for civilian use: a range of an eighth of an inch to four, with an average of one and a half. Don had always considered himself an above-average man, and on that day he was vindicated. Ms. Horne's colleagues, who had been treated similarly by the now-bite-sized man hurling inaudible insults from an examination table, were feeling charitable towards the new hire; the most diplomatic among them concocted the version of events that Don later relayed to Vera during the interview. His mother arrived to fetch her son. She sighed but told herself this was just life in the modern world. He left the Center in her purse, dodging loose change and tubes of lipstick, pathetically small but assured that his insignificance, even compared to other applicants, set him apart as a maverick, an alpha, a high-achiever, who hardly needed those extra few inches and would rather someone less able to brave the vast new world keep a few instead.
***
Not too far into the interview, Vera realized that any prolonged exposure to Don Harkins was a medical hazard. Whatever this episode of the podcast might have been, she knew it had long crossed the Rubicon into the realm of the unlistenable; the raw material would be unworkable. No amount of editing could rectify the dysfunction on display: the interviewees host of pathologies and the interviewers clear and obvious contempt for him. As he was regaling her with his version of the events at the Center, she shut off the microphones with him knowing. She sighed. She'd have to release an old premium episode on the free feed to make up this one, but it simply wasn't worth the time and effort to sift through the words of her subject for anything of interest.
Still, she had him here, and though she could no longer feign respect or even interest in Don Harkins, there remained a residual curiosity she wanted satisfied.
"Tell me about your sister. she said, changing the subject abruptly." She hadn't been listening, but she could surmise that Don had somehow ambulated to the topic of electoral politics. Thank God I'm not relistening to this, she thought.
"What? I thought this interview was about me!"
"Okay… talk about your sister vis a vis you. How has she adapted to your… situation." Her voice was cold, tempered steel. He didn't notice that shift in mood.
"Well, as I said before, she does the cooking, cleaning, laundry, et cetera. The boring stuff."
"So she's your mom, got it."
"No. We went over this. My mom gave up because she couldn't hack it."
I could reach over and hold my thumb over his mouth and never let go, I could do it, he couldn't stop me.
"Yeah, she said, so you replaced your real mom with a weird sister-surrogate mom and its all a big fucking Freudian mess, go on."
"Not a big Freud person. Intellectually, I've always been more of a Jungian. And anyway, my sister's not really up to the task either. First, she always has a damned attitude, like I'm forcing her to do something. And she's so distant! She never says a word to me, her own brother! Anytime she wants to wash my clothes she picks me up––without my consent, I might add—and takes them off herself. She had a real bad habit of cooking dinner and serving herself without serving me. Then, when I ask her what her problem is, she drops me in the spaghetti or whatever, like she's putting me in timeout. I'm her older brother, I've seen things she could never in a million years understand. I'm full of earthly wisdom… does she ever ask me for advice? No. She just treats me like I'm a kid or a pet! I remember one time, the Athletics were playing and she's watching some stupid crime show or something. So I walk over to her feet while she's sitting on the couch and very very politely ask if I can watch the damn game in my own damn house…" He paused, out of breath.
"And then? Vera asked. She'd already taken a liking to this sister"
"Well she kind of…" he stumbled over his words slightly. Even the mighty Don Harkins could get flustered, it seemed. "She kind of picked me up with her toes and threw me across the floor."
"Oh, damn! Vera said, genuinely excited, But what about your combat skills, Don? Surely some dumb [REDACTED] woman could get the best of Don Harkins!?"
"I just didn't see her coming is all."
Vera fell silent, stunned.
"Anyway it's not even her worst offense. She loves to overstay her welcome and hang out at my place, even she's not helping at all. She'll sleep there, have friends over for game nights…"
"Ooh! Do they use you as a game piece?" she asked, enthused once more.
"No, because she puts me in a jar and leaves me in the bedroom because, get this, this is what she really said, she said 'You're weird and off-putting and creepy and I don't want you meeting my friends.; Can you believe that?"
Yes. Absolutely. she thought
"No! That's horrible!", she said.
"She threw a party once! A bachelorette party, I think. But she forgot her precious jar this time! I spent the whole night dodging her degenerate friends' feet! Sometimes, I feel like a stranger in my home. Oh, but worst of all. Worst of all, one time she brought one her [REDACTED] friends over…"
"Lesbian! You can just say lesbian! There's nothing wrong with the word lesbian!"
"Well, let's agree to disagree. Anyway, she has this friend over, and I can already tell it's gonna be a pain in the ass. They're watching that dumbass crime show and they're feeling all over each other…"
"Go on, go on."
"They get up and go to my bedroom and get on my bed…"
"Yes, go on."
"They start, you know."
"No, I actually don't. Please describe it in detail. This is a podcast about this sort of thing, come on!"
"Yes, but I'm the subject, aren't I? It's my interview."
"Okay, fine. What did you do?"
"Well I've always been a talented climber…"
I'm fucking losing it!
"…I get all the way up to the bed, where they're, you know, and I try to get between them."
Ooh, hold on.
"I get sort of caught between their legs and I get discombobulated. Eventually, I get my bearings, and I'm smashed between their tits, just awful, and I fall out onto the bed again and her friend or whatever sees me and gets the idea to put me in her mouth."
Holy shit.
"So they're kind of passing me back and forth between with their mouths and I'm like doe she even realize what's happening? Like I'm her brother, and she's using me like a fucking aphrodisiac or something, it's disgusting, and I only enjoyed it a little bit so I'm obviously not to blame."
"Of course!"
"At some point I get spat out onto the bed and they stop and look at me and they're laughing even though I'm explaining why what they just did was fucked up. And my sister says, she says this to me, her own brother, she says 'Don, you're life is fucking over, get used to it.' And she sweeps her leg out and knocks me off the bed. Can you believe that? Vera? Hello?"
Vera regretted somewhat her decision to stop the recording.
"I know right? I was speechless too."
"Speaking of this being over, Vera said slowly, we're almost out of time…"
"Are you sure, we haven't even stopped for ads or anything."
"Oh yeah. We're skipping the ads this episode because it's just so important the people hear your story."
"Right on."
"And since we're so close to being out of time, I have one more question."
With this, she stood up and bent forward slightly, casting a heavy shadow over her guest.
"Don, do you think you could be in a relationship with a woman if you wanted to?"
She walked over to his side of the table.
'Fucking duh. I've got so many good qualities. Women love me."
Women love me.
"What about me, Don? Do you think I find you attractive?"
"Well, I didn't want to say anything, but it's pretty obvious you're into me, yeah."
"Even though I'm thousands of times your size? Even though I could knock you to the ground just by shouting at you?"
"Ugh, typical. Women always focus too much on size."
"This is more than a height difference! You just told me an anecdote about fighting a spider! And you were proud of it! I could press down on your chest right now and you wouldn't be able to push it off you no matter how hard you tried!"
Don puffed his chest out, trying his best to intimidate his interviewer. He was entirely enveloped in her shadow, but he did not notice.
"Are you fucking threatening me?"
"No, I'm stating a fact. The world is threatening to you like this, you're helpless. You wouldn't even be alive right now if you didn't have other people in your life to help you survive. And, no offense, but most women wouldn't be able to get past the fact that you're like a different fucking species at this size!"
She bit her lip and said, "Sorry, that was fucked up to say. That won't go in."
That and everything else.
He raised his voice, though the microphone continued to do the bulk of the work, "So you're saying I'm inferior to you! Oh that's always what it comes down to, huh. Give women a goddamned inch and they take a mile."
Not much difference for you…
"I'm saying… look, you put of stock on physical strength, okay? Which is why your decision to do this to yourself is just fucking baffling. Like if we got into a scrap, I would win, very easily. And I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just saying what is a very plainly obvious truth, that literally anyone else on earth would understand!"
"You're saying you could beat me in a fight? That's what you're saying? If you want this to turn into the Jerry Springer show just say the fucking word!"
"Dude, what are you talking about? I could just flush you down the toilet!"
"Oh, so you need a weapon!"
"No! Because I'm the size of a fucking skyscraper to you! I wouldn't even be able to hear you if wasn't for this microphone! I could flick you across the room! I could squeeze you to death with one finger! I could crush you with one step! I could literally put you in my mouth and subdue you with my tongue!"
"Just fucking try it!"
"You have no idea how close I am!"
"I don't have to stand for this! This interview is over!"
"I'm in complete agreement!"
She shut off the microphone but he continued to shout at her. He hopped up and down, but his voice could not rise above a squeak. She was far past the point of finding the situation amusing. She went to the refrigerator and grabbed another Solo cup.
"What are you doing now? Call my fucking sister so she can pick me up!" he squeaked, but Vera could not hear him. She inverted the cup and placed it over him; she put her ear to it and shook it from side to side and heard his grunts and laughed.
***
Objects of varying heights and colors are arranged in a line across a table. To most observers, the province of these objects would be obvious. Don Harkins, however, could not observe the situation cleanly, from the outside, and furthermore could not see beyond the pathetic horizon left to him in his current state. Hours after the interview ended, Vera once again brought him under her control. His futile protests hardly registered a sensation in her hand as she worked to tie him to one of these objects, placed at the far end of the table. Once bound, he continued to snap and gnash his teeth, to hurl expletives into the brief space where a creature might conceivably hear him, a space that Vera stood far beyond; no word of condemnation ever made its way to her. Far from reveling in her unambiguous triumph over her former guest, she seemed joyless, as if she were acting merely to satisfy the terms of a contract to an unseen obligee.
And she was. Vera Valentine had never missed an upload date. Her audience might be spared the ramblings of Don Harkins, but this gift would go unsung; a substitution was in order.
After struggling against his confines for some time, Don gave up and resigned himself to whatever fate Vera had in store for him. His will only abated for a brief while, however. Once he turned his attention to the other objects on the table, once he had fully made sense of the situation, his struggle resumed.
In lieu of an interview with Don Harkins, a cultural liaison of the SMOL Community, Vera Valentine would upload the first episode of a new series on the subscriber-only feed. It was a review show called Girl Toys. She was to review, in this inaugural episode, the objects presently on the table; they were "toys" of every make and model, in all shapes and sizes. Save for the last, at the far end, which was a fairly standard device. Or it would be, except for Vera's custom modification: one Don Harkins, strapped helplessly to the tip. Vera took it in her hand, shook it around, prodded her powerless captive, and made the last minute decision to give it a preliminary go, before beginning her tests in earnest. As she moved it down slowly towards her thighs, she watched the expression of horror overtake her would-be feature. Her joylessness vanished, and she burst into a fit of laughter.
"You know, Don, I misjudged you! she said, "You're not useless; you just hadn't found your calling yet!"
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
I have returned from a long sojourn with more mean-spirited hijinks! The italicized bit at the beginning is the introduction; it's here because it's not long enough to be a separate chapter (lol).
Chapter End Notes:
I don't plan on making this series a regular thing, it's more of a whenever-the-mood-hits-me affair. Oh, and for anyone who cares, I'm finishing the other story soon, very soon.